Gresham Sykes

Who was Gresham Sykes?

Gresham M'Cready Sykes was an American sociologist and criminologist. He earned a Bachelor of Arts at Princeton University and a Ph. D. at Northwestern University. He taught at Princeton, Dartmouth, and Northwestern prior to becoming sociology professor at the University of Virginia. Sykes's study of New Jersey State Prison has been described as a pioneering look at the issues faced by guards, as well as the pains of imprisonment encountered by inmates . His most famous work is The Society of Captives, which is sometimes considered the first work in the genre of prison sociology. He coauthored Techniques of Neutralization: A Theory of Delinquency with David Matza, published in the American Sociological Review in December 1957.